2 Corinthians 7:2–8:15

0:00 All right, friends, it's time for a little Sunday school fun. I'm going to say something, and you're going to say what comes next. You ready? Here we go. Zacchaeus was a wee little man. He climbed up in a? For? Yeah, some of you said to see what he could see. That was the brown bear that went over the mountain. He's not in the Bible. I heard somebody over here say to see what he could see. It's for the Lord he wanted to see. Anybody know the, well, I guess the second part of this is still the first verse.

0:34 As the Savior passed that way. Oh, y'all don't know that as well. Yeah, he looked up in the tree. Yeah, as the Savior passed that way, he looked up in the tree. And you got to do this part with all the gusto you did when you were in kindergarten. You ready? And he said. That Jesus, you come now. For I'm. Going to your house today. For I'm going to your house today. And you say it again, right? Okay, how many of you know the second verse? That was not the second verse. That was the first one. But there's a tag at the end of that little children's song that goes like this. I want to see how many of you know this.

1:06 Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a, no, not wee little man this time. No. He's a happy man. Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a happy man was he. For he had seen the Lord that day and a happy man was he and a very happy man was he. That's how the song ends. That's pretty good, right? I mean, it's not a bad ending to the song because he's the Lord, the Lord comes into his house, and he winds up being happy because, like Jesus said, salvation came to Zacchaeus' house that day.

1:39 So it's not a bad ending, but it's not the best ending, right? Because that whole song from the wee little man to the sycamore tree to the Zacchaeus, you come down, to the happy man was he leaves out a really important part of that story. And it is that Zacchaeus was not just happy because salvation had come to his house. He was changed. You remember the story, right? Salvation comes to the house of Zacchaeus, and Zacchaeus' heart is changed because he was not just a wee little man. He was a rich little man.

2:10 He had a lot of money, a lot of which he had defrauded from people around him. And so when the Lord comes into his house and changes his heart, what does he say? He says, Lord, my heart is changed, and therefore I'm going to take half of everything that I own and give it away to the poor, and from the other half, anybody that I've defrauded, anybody that I've done wrong to, I'm going to give, I'm going to restore what I took from them fourfold. That's the point of the story. It's not that Zacchaeus was a wee little man. It's not the tree. It's not even that he wound up happy at the end. It's that Zacchaeus' changed heart resulted in changed priorities.

2:51 Zacchaeus' changed heart led to changed priorities. And that's the same kind of thing we're going to be seeing in our passage today in 2 Corinthians. Take a Bible. If you have one, turn over to 2 Corinthians chapter 7. If you want to use one of these red pew Bibles right here that you can find scattered throughout the main hall here, you'll find 2 Corinthians chapter 7 on page 967. And we're going to be looking today at about a chapter and a half of the book of 2 Corinthians. So if you look on page 967, you're going to see down in the text there a big number 7.

3:24 That's chapter 7, as we call it. It goes down until you see the big 8. That's the beginning of chapter 8. So we're going to be in chapter 7, the whole thing, and then about half of chapter 8. If you've been with us for the last three weeks or last few weeks, I guess it's been a little longer than that. My guess is you probably know the basic back story of this book. It was written in about A.D. 55, so you're talking, what, 1980 years ago, 1970 years ago, something like that. And it's not actually the second letter. Despite the fact that we call it 2 Corinthians, it's not actually the second letter that the apostle Paul wrote to this new church in Corinth.

4:00 It's the fourth. So there were four letters that Paul wrote. We can kind of pick it up from the story of Acts and even little snippets in the book. There were, so, you know, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, 3 Corinthians, and 4 Corinthians, basically. And what we have in our Bibles that we sort of mistakenly call first and second, those are actually second and fourth Corinthians. First and third Corinthians are lost to history. We don't know exactly what they said, but we can kind of piece it together from what Paul talks about in the two letters that we do have. Well, essentially what's happening here in the backstory is that Paul has been in a nasty fight with this church in the city of Corinth for about the last year or so before this letter that we're looking at today is written.

4:39 And that fight was brought on by a number of people in the church making the charge against Paul that he's not fit to be an apostle. And they had all kinds of reasons, and Paul takes those on one at a time. We've already kind of been through most of that section of the book. Well, there was a flurry of activity in this fight that Paul was having with his church. In AD 54-55, Paul made an emergency visit to Corinth to try to set things right. That emergency visit ended up being a disaster. Instead of making another trip to try to fix that, he decided instead that he was going to send what's been called his severe letter or his letter of many tears to the Corinthians.

5:15 Which absolutely, as far as we can tell, raked them over the coals for their behavior. And then Paul's associate, Titus, who had taken that severe letter, was supposed to meet Paul up in a city called Troas, giving him word that the severe letter mostly worked. Now, what do we mean by mostly? Well, what we mean by mostly is that in the wake of the severe letter, most of the congregation, Paul calls it a bare majority, a bare majority of the congregation in Corinth had responded with good stuff.

5:48 Repentance, a desire to reconcile with Paul. And so this letter then that we're studying, 2 Corinthians, is Paul's response to that mostly good news that Titus had brought. And in this letter, Paul's doing a few things. He's celebrating the Corinthians' repentance, most of them anyway, their desire to reconcile with him. He's also working to cut this kind of, you know, rear guard action to continue defending his apostleship against the minority that's still against him. And then this is a new thing that we're coming to for the first time today. He's using this letter, 2 Corinthians, to appeal to the Corinthians to give generously and quickly to a fund of money that he's been collecting for the relief of a very deep financial need in the church at Jerusalem.

6:34 Now, we're going to talk about that collection more. You get little snippets of it throughout the New Testament, so we can kind of piece together what's going on with it. I'll tell you more about that later. But first, let's just kind of do a sort of speedboat run through the letter of 1 Corinthians as we've seen it so far. It's probably best to think of the structure of 2 Corinthians so far kind of like this. From chapter 1 all the way through chapter 2, verse 13, Paul is basically on the main line of his letter. He's doing the thing that he mostly intended to do in the letter, which is bring the Corinthians up to speed on his travel plans, explain why his travel plans changed in a certain way.

7:11 He's rejoicing in that main line over the change of heart toward him and generally telling them what's been happening since he left them. And all of that is leading up finally to this big ask that he's going to give them starting in chapter 8, which is to contribute to this fund. So that's the main line of the letter. The problem is that that main line stops at 2.13 and really doesn't pick up again until 7.5, right? So if you're in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, put your finger there and flip back over one or two pages to 2 Corinthians chapter 2.

7:48 So I'm catching all y'all that are using your iPads and stuff because you can't put your finger in chapter 7. Okay, so flip over to 2 and look at 13, or look at 12. He says, Do you see that? Do you see how he just literally picks up from 2.13 to 7.5?

8:21 He picks up the main line of the letter right there and just keeps going as if there hasn't even been a break in it. But of course, there has been a break because you've got this four and a half chapter long digression in which Paul basically defends his apostolic ministry against people who were challenging him on it. And he answers a lot of their objections, right? You remember from studying those chapters. He addresses the objection that Paul, you suffer too much. He explains the, or he addresses the objection that the old covenant was way more glorious and bright than the new covenant he's trying to proclaim.

8:54 He explains why some people aren't buying his message, which was another objection against him. Paul, if your message was so glorious and divine, people wouldn't be rejecting it like they are. And he addresses that message. He explains how he keeps going in the midst of all these hardships. And in the end, when he's kind of finished with the whole thing, he finally calls on the Corinthians to abandon their worldly pursuits, abandon their idolatry, and accept him as a genuine apostle. He says, all these objections are off the table. Now you, Corinthians, need to open your hearts to me and accept me as an apostle.

9:24 So that's what's going on in the structure of the letter so far. You've got the main line that does that, and then you've got this digression of sort of defense of the ministry in the middle of it. Well, today we're going to look at about a chapter and a half of the letter where Paul, we're getting to this point where Paul ends the digression and returns to the main line of the letter. So all of chapter 7 and halfway through chapter 8. And you're going to notice that I think the logic of this chapter, these two chapters, moves really fast. I mean, basically what Paul does is that he emphatically, in chapter 7, reaffirms his love for the Corinthians in the wake of their repentance.

10:00 I mean, the whole thing is just, I love you, I love you, I love you. My heart is filled up with joy over you because of your genuine repentance and desire to reconcile with me. And then, right on the heels of all of that joy and love, he calls on them to show that repentance by giving to that relief fund for the Jerusalem church. Okay, now I want to pause right there, even before we read it. Because even as I describe that, what's happening in this section, some of you are probably already sitting back in your chair, folding your arms, and thinking, great. See, it's ultimately all about money, just like I thought.

10:34 All this love stuff, all this joy stuff, all this repentance stuff, etc., etc. It's all about money, and even Paul, the great apostle, is nothing but a money-grubbing shyster. But hold that thought. Hold on to it, because I think by the end of this whole thing, you're going to see that that's not true at all. The fact is, Paul has very good reasons. Reasons not having anything to do with his own enrichment, but very good reasons for wanting to collect this money. And his concern with regard to the Corinthians is not so much the money.

11:07 I mean, you'll see the logic of it later. That's not so much what he's concerned about. He's concerned about their hearts. But he knows that if they get their hearts right, generosity will flow out of that. Because he knows that the state of their hearts has a ton to do with the decisions they make about their money. So I hope you can see that logic as we read it. Let's look at chapter 7 and a little bit of chapter 8. Starting in 7-2. Paul says, make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one. We have corrupted no one. We've taken advantage of no one.

11:38 I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you were in our hearts to die together and to live together. I am acting with great boldness towards you. I have great pride in you. I'm filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn, fightings without and fears within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus. And not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you. As he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.

12:14 For even if I made you grieve with my letter, that would be 3 Corinthians, right? The severe letter. Even if I made you grieve with my letter, I don't regret it. I did regret it for a while. But I did regret it for a while, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice. Not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death.

12:46 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you. But also what eagerness to clear yourselves. What indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment. At every point you've proved yourselves innocent in the matter. So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong. Nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong. but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. And therefore, we are comforted. Besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.

13:17 For whatever boasts I made to him about you, I was not put to shame, but just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting before Titus is proved true. And his affection for you is even greater, as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. I rejoice because I have complete confidence in you. We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia. For in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.

13:48 For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. And this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. But as you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you, see that you excel in this act of grace also.

14:19 I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. And in this matter, I give my judgment. This benefits you, who a year ago started not only to do this work, but also desire to do it. So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.

14:53 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. As it is written, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Now, as is his way, this is a pretty tightly packed little thing here, but you can see the movement of it really easily, I think. The structure of it is just incredibly straightforward. It really starts at 7. This section starts at 7.5 and runs all the way down through 8.15, and it has two main parts, right? You've got Paul expressing his love for the Corinthians, and then you've got Paul asking the Corinthians for their help. What about one, what about verses two through four? Well, two through four actually belong up there in that prior section. It's wrapping up the prior section. So the, remember the intern monk that messed up the chapter divisions really bad in 2 Corinthians? Here he messed it up again. So the chapter really ought to start at 7.5. I mean, y'all do know that the chapter and verse divisions aren't inspired,

15:55 right? Like Paul didn't write little numbers in his letters as he was writing it. The chapter divisions and verse divisions were put in by an archbishop of Canterbury named Stephen Langton in the 1200s. They didn't actually make it into print until a French Bible in 1515. So don't ever get messed up by the verse divisions. You can leave them out in fact and sometimes get insight into what the text is actually saying. Anyway, so what you've got there are those two big sections starting in 7.5, running through there. Paul's affection and then Paul's big ask. I think Paul's point here is not just a kind of, I love you, I love you, I love you, now give me your money. That's not what he's doing. What he's doing is something far, far deeper than that.

16:39 What he's saying is the same kind of thing we were talking about with Zacchaeus, that a changed heart will result in changed priorities. A changed heart will result in changed priorities, and those changed priorities will have an effect even on how you spend your money. So Paul here in 2 Corinthians 7 and 8 is getting intensely practical when he's talking about money, and we're going to get intensely practical today talking about money. But you need to understand that this topic is also intensely spiritual. Because how you spend your money, how you think about your money, is a spiritual issue. And there's just no escaping that in the Bible. So that's the main idea. Genuine repentance leads to a generous heart. Genuine repentance leads to a generous heart. I think it's that simple. A heart that has been changed by the truth of the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ will think about money differently. And a heart that doesn't think about money differently

17:41 is a heart that has not been changed by the gospel. So two points to the sermon, just looking at these two major sections of this passage, chapter 7 and then 8, 1 through 15. And we're going to just take that main idea apart. A genuine repentance, that's point one, leads to a generous heart, that's point to. So off we go. Number one, a generous, or sorry, a genuine repentance. A genuine repentance. That's Paul's main point in chapter seven. He wants to rejoice because in response to his severe letter to him, the Corinthians have shown a genuine repentance and a genuine desire to make things right. So in seven, five, you look at two to four. We've already talked about that. That kind of, that's wrapping up what's, what's come before. He just kind of continues his thought from six, 11 through 13, calls on the Corinthians to open their hearts to him, receive me as a true apostle, reiterates what he's already said several times in the letter, that he's never defrauded anybody, he's never, you know, done anything wrong to anybody, and so they

18:41 ought to accept him as a genuine apostle. It's in 7.5, though, that the new section really begins, where he picks up from 2.13, goes on talking about his travels, his travel itinerary. So if you remember from chapter 2, he'd sent Titus to Corinth carrying this severe letter. And they made plans before Titus left that Titus would go from Ephesus where Paul was over to Corinth, deliver the severe letter. Paul would travel from Ephesus up to Troas and Timothy would meet him in Troas. If Timothy didn't make it though to Troas, Paul was going to go on up into Macedonia.

19:15 And then Timothy would go up there and find him in Macedonia probably in Philippi is where they would have met. So that was the plan. But when Titus didn't show up in time, it left Paul in a particular state of mind. So look at verse 5, and let's look at Paul's state of mind when Titus didn't get there. Even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest. But we were afflicted at every turn, fightings without and fears within.

19:51 Those two words there, fighting and fear, they're plural. So Paul is pulling no punches. It's not just one fight and not just one fear. I have fightings without and fears within my heart. Now, I don't know about you, but I find that really interesting. And I think it's interesting because it's tempting to think at times that great spiritual leaders like Paul are just these kind of rocks of stability, these immovable stones of unbroken joy. And that spiritual leaders who really know Jesus, who are really in touch with God, do not and should not ever get depressed or downcast.

20:30 It's not true, though. Spiritual leaders do get down. Spiritual leaders do get depressed. Charles Spurgeon said it one time. He got into the pulpit of his church one day in 1866, and he started his sermon like this. I, today, am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever gets to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to. I mean, that's deep. And people have written that it blew some of the congregants' minds because it was just incomprehensible to them that the great Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers of the gospel in all of history, would be susceptible to that kind of feeling.

21:08 And yeah, here's Paul, too, saying that he was subject to exactly that kind of depression of spirit. And notice there that it's not just affliction from without. I mean, there was that, right? That's what he means by we had fightings without. That was part of his affliction. But the other half of that phrase there is fears within. And in verse 6, he goes on and says that he was downcast. It's a word that's used often in the Psalms. And it means a kind of lowness of spirit. So what do you think about that?

21:41 I mean, looking at Paul here in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, saying, I am downcast. I have fears within. What do you think about that? Well, I think there are a couple of things to learn from it, a couple of things to see here. One is that we need to just notice as Christians that feeling downcast and depressed is not an unusual thing among people. It's not even an unusual thing among Christians. I mean, there are, of course, I know, different causes for that feeling of depression.

22:11 Sometimes it's external circumstances that are pressing on us. Sometimes it's spiritual causes. Sometimes it's physiological causes. But someone once said that depression is like the common cold of the human soul. Because sooner or later, everybody's going to catch it. So, friend, if you're here and you're feeling that kind of depression, if you're feeling that kind of downcastness, one thing that you can learn from 2 Corinthians 7 is that you are not alone in that, even as a Christian. So even if everybody around you today is singing songs that have words like, arise, my soul, arise, cast off your guilty fears, and you're thinking, I can't do that.

22:52 You need to know that you're not alone. You're not the only person who's singing those words, not as a declaration of the state that you're in right now, but as a prayer of hope to God. There are a lot of Christians who are feeling like that. And there's no shame in saying to other Christians what Paul says here. I am full of fears within. My affliction is external sometimes, yes, but I am also full of fears within. In fact, saying that to another Christian, recognizing that it's not an unusual thing, can be the first step to experiencing what came next for Paul, which was to be comforted by the grace of God.

23:27 We'll talk about that more in a minute. I want you to notice another thing here, though, too. It's not just that it's not an unusual thing for Christians to feel this kind of downcastness of soul. Notice something else here, too, that Christian leaders aren't immune to feeling downcast and depressed sometimes. I mean, for Paul here, it was a combination of things. You know, there were the fightings without, which meant he was constantly struggling both with and for his churches. He was in this fight with the church in Corinth, and he was trying to protect other churches from persecution.

24:02 and some churches from just tearing themselves apart from the inside out. He had fightings without, but he also, he says, had fears within because of his deep, heartfelt concern for them. He didn't want those churches to blow up. He didn't want those churches to come apart. You know, I really do think that sometimes people can think that Christian leaders, maybe even can think of people like elders here at Third Avenue, are immune to feeling beat down by the demands of ministry. But here's one thing that I need you to hear today, mostly so that you can pray.

24:37 Spiritual leaders, church leaders, elders are not immune to that sort of thing. They're just not. I mean, you know, I don't ever, like in all of my life, want to sound whiny in any way whatsoever. I mean, at least any more whiny than Paul sounds here, right? But sometimes I do, you know, sometimes I do after a long elders meeting or something like that. I do wish that all 700 of you sometimes could sit through the hours of executive session at an elders meeting and just hear the kinds of things that our elders here at 3rd Avenue have put in front of them.

25:13 Because, friends, I can promise you that there are sorrows, and I'm not going to lie to you, there are also joys in the ministry of being an elder that those men face in that room that we'll, frankly, never, ever be able to tell you about. It's just the nature of being an elder. I love this quote from Phillips Brooks. Anybody know who he is? Phillips Brooks was the Archbishop of Canterbury. He's most famous for writing, Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem, right? Okay, so he just went from being a stranger to a friend to you, didn't he? Yeah, Phillips Brooks, he wrote, Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem, but he also wrote this about his own sort of position as a minister, as a pastor.

25:48 He said, to be a minister is always to accept new happiness and new pain. The man who gives himself to other people as a pastor can never, ever be a holy, sad man. But no more can he be a man of unbroken gladness. To him shall come with every dawning day a before untasted joy. But in that same cup will be mixed a sorrow that it was beyond his power to feel just the day before.

26:24 It's so true. So friends, what I'm asking you here for is not so much sympathy, it's prayer. I'm asking you to pray for the elders of this church. Pray that God would sustain them through the ministry that he's called them to. Because it is full of both sorrows and joys. That's what Paul says that he was feeling. From 6 to 13, though, he recounts how he was finally comforted in this affliction. The fighting's without, the fear's within, everything that was causing him to feel afflicted and downcast in his soul, he finally says in verse 6 and following how he was comforted in that affliction. Now, he gives credit to God for it, but you can see that the reason he's comforted in his affliction is because Titus finally showed up from Macedonia with good news. The good news was that Paul's severe letter to the church in Corinth had worked. It had largely worked. They'd seen how they'd been wrong in opposing him, and they'd repented of that sin. Now, I know I think here's

27:25 what's interesting about this section. You can see that it's a whole section because in 6 he talks about being comforted and then in 13 he wraps the whole thing up by saying therefore we are comforted. So it's a self-contained little unit of text there. And I think the most interesting thing about that little unit of text is that Paul does some of the best work in the entire New Testament, some of the deepest work in the whole Bible about exactly what repentance is. And there's a lot of things, I think, if we look closer, that we can learn about this repentance that these Corinthians have come to.

28:05 And then we can see those things work out in our own lives as well. Let me give you just, how many am I going to give you? Let me give you three lessons that we can learn about repentance from these verses. As you look at verses 6 through 13 of chapter 7, first of all, I want you to notice that grief is not the same thing as repentance. Grief is not the same thing as repentance. So look at verses 8 and 9. That's where you see this the most clearly. He says, Even if I made you grieve with my letter, I don't regret it.

28:36 Though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. You see that? Grief and repentance are not the same thing. It's a fascinating little phrase there, isn't it? You were grieved into repenting. So grief is not the same thing as repentance. And in fact, grief drives you, if it's doing its work well, it drives a person to repentance. It's an important lesson to learn because I think a whole lot of Christians think that if they just grieve their sin, if they just feel bad about their sin, if they even just feel broken about their sin, that that counts as repentance, that the tears count as repentance.

29:20 But what Paul is saying here is that, no, the grief doesn't count. The grief isn't repentance. The tears aren't repentance. If grief does what it's supposed to do, it pushes you toward what really matters, and that is repentance. Hence that phrase, you were grieved into repenting. That's the first thing. Grief and repentance are not the same thing. Number two, second thing we can learn from this, is that not only is grief not the same thing as repentance, But grief in itself can actually lead to spiritual death.

29:54 Grief in itself can actually lead to spiritual death. Look at verse 10. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. Do you see what Paul's saying there? The picture that he's drawing there is kind of like grief as a train station with two tracks running out of it, right? One of those tracks leading to death and the other track leading to life. But it all starts with grief. Both death and life start with grief.

30:25 So what's the difference? Like how do you get on one track to life and stay off the track to death in your grief over your sin? Well, the way Paul describes it here is that it's the difference between godly grief on the one hand that leads to life and worldly grief over here that leads to death. Okay, great. Godly grief and worldly grief. But what's that? What's the difference? Well, let me give it to you. Ultimately, the difference between worldly grief and godly grief is the difference between grieving because you have sinned against God, that's godly grief, and grieving because you have been caught and you've lost something that you wanted.

31:02 That's worldly grief. You catch that? The difference between the two is that godly grief is ultimately grieving over your sin because you have sinned against a God who loves you and is infinitely glorious and holy. That's godly grief. Worldly grief is grieving because you have been caught and you have lost something that you wanted. And think about David's grief in Psalm 51, for instance, over his sin with Bathsheba. He says about that sin, against you, God, you only have I sinned. My heart is like wax within me. But then compare that. So that's a deep heartfelt grief because he knows that in his sin against Bathsheba, he has sinned against the holy God.

31:45 And so it creates a godly grief in him. But compare that grief to the grief of the salesmen. That's what they are in Revelation 18. You remember what it says about them? And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn. Good for the merchants, right? They're weeping. They're mourning. They're broken. They weep and mourn since no one buys their cargo anymore. They weep and mourn because no one buys their cargo anymore. You see the point there? That kind of worldly grief for self, for loss, for shame leads to death because it is fundamentally self-centered.

32:23 It folds in on itself. That kind of worldly grief for self, for loss, for shame turns in on itself and looks at itself and eventually it collapses and implodes in on itself. But godly grief does exactly the opposite thing. Godly grief doesn't turn you into yourself until you collapse. Godly grief causes you to look up and out toward the Savior. It causes you to look up and out toward God. And it leads, therefore, onto better things. Repentance and ultimately onto salvation. And that's why I worry sometimes about common language among Christians.

33:00 Where Christians will often have this seeming desire just to sit in brokenness over their sin. Now, I want to be careful about that. Because to be broken, to be grieved over sin is the first start, right? It's not just a good first start. It is the first start toward repentance. But the thing about grief, the thing about brokenness, is that you're not supposed to just stay there. You're not supposed to just sit in brokenness. Paul seems to be teaching here that grief is supposed to move. It's supposed to move quickly and head down the track toward repentance.

33:33 It's a bullet train. It moves fast. I worry when Christians sometimes say, you know, I just need to take some time to stare my sin in the face. I just need to get real with my sin. I need to stare my sin in the face. And I just want to say, no, you don't. You need to stare your Savior in the face. You need to kick the sin to the curb and stare Jesus in the face. There's nothing to be gained from staring sin in the face. There's nothing to be gained by getting honest with your sin. Get honest with your Savior and look him in the face.

34:05 And the things of this earth will grow strangely dim. I promise. So when you become aware of your sin, what happens? Are you grieved by it? Okay, good. It's good that you're grieved by your sin, but friend, that's not enough. If you're just sitting in grief over your sin, the train hasn't even left the station. And it's a wide open question whether that grief in your soul is going to turn in on itself and send you to death.

34:36 Or whether it's going to look up to the Savior and send you to life. Don't sit in your grief. Go to the Savior and repent. So what does that look like? What does repentance look like? Well, Paul tells us in verse 11. This is the third thing he teaches us here. He teaches us in verse 11 that repentance is active and energetic. Repentance is active and energetic. It does not mean to just sit in grief or brokenness. What Paul describes here in 11, look at it. See what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you.

35:09 And also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment. At every point you've proved yourselves innocent in the matter. What he's describing here is what turns out to be a seven-fold kind of repentance. The number seven being really important. It's a seven-fold complete kind of repentance that goes all the way down from the heart out into the life. You see that in those words? Some of those words in verse 11 are talking about the way the Corinthians feel. It's talking about their emotions.

35:39 It's talking about things in their hearts. Others of those words, though, are describing their actions. Describing things that they did and taken together. What this shows us, this seven-fold repentance, is what it looks like when somebody really and truly repents. When the train of grief shoots off like a bullet into repentance. So let's take a look at it. First of all, there at the beginning of that verse, this godly grief in the Corinthians has produced earnestness in you, he says. This godly grief has produced earnestness in you.

36:11 Literally, that word, earnestness, down in the Greek, means speed and determination. That's what it means. It has produced an earnestness, a desire for speed, and a determination to get things done. All of a sudden, because of Paul's severe letter, the Corinthians had been cut to the heart. They were grieved, and now they were determined, not a week from now, not months from now, not after a season of staring their sin in the face, But right now, they're determined to do what's necessary to make things right with them. Like I said, the train from grief to repentance is a bullet train.

36:44 It moves fast. And that's what happened to the Corinthians. And what had it led to? Well, a lot of things. You keep looking through that verse. It had led to an eagerness to clear themselves, to sort of do what's necessary, to make themselves innocent. Paul had said they had done wrong to him. And so they were eager now to do what was necessary to make themselves clear of that charge. To make themselves clean in Paul's eyes. It led also there to indignation. Probably against this guy who publicly opposed Paul that they should have excommunicated from the church.

37:16 And against themselves. They probably had some indignation against themselves for having listened to that guy in the first place. It led to fear there probably of God's judgment and desire to be holy. Same word as up in 7.1 that you should live in the fear of God. Fifth, it led to longing. You just keep going through the verse. Longing, probably to make things right and reconcile with Paul. They now had a longing to be with him, to be near him, to be right with him. Zeal would be very similar to earnestness. They wanted to take action quickly and determinedly to make things right.

37:46 And then punishment. That's a weird word. It's probably not so much in the Greek meaning the infliction of punishment. You know, what punishment? It's really not that. It's more, the base meaning of it is more the meeting out of justice. So it's a desire to bring justice, a desire to do what's right. And it's shaded over in time to, you know, the actual punishment itself. But what Paul is talking about there is what I see in your repentance is what desire for justice.

38:17 That's what he means. What a desire to make things right. So taking all those things together, you see kind of the outline, you see the contours of what true repentance looks like. right? It was sevenfold. It was comprehensive. It was all the way down and all the way out. They were grieved by Paul's letter and that letter and the grief that it caused in them had led to a quick heartfelt desire driven by the fear of God and by love for Paul himself to do what was necessary to make things right, to put the fire out. So seeing that, friend, I wonder if you see that kind of repentance in yourself. I don't even mean just like right now. I just mean in the course of your everyday life because this kind of seven-fold repentance, a quick, heartfelt desire to make things right, ought to be a pretty common occurrence in the Christian life, actually.

39:06 And when you realize, for example, that you've said something wrong to somebody, when you realize that you've sinned against someone, that's what ought to catch fire in your mind and heart. Not a desire to defend yourself, not a desire to come up with arguments for why you're actually right or why it's not your responsibility to go to that person. No, what ought to kindle in your heart is a quick, heartfelt desire to make it right. I hope that's the kind of church that will be. I hope that's the kind of repentance that will be marked by as a church. Quick, heartfelt desire.

39:38 Driven by the love of God to make things right. Well, that leads to point two. Genuine repentance. That's one, right? Genuine repentance, number two, leads to a generous heart. Point number two, this genuine repentance, when it's there, will lead to a generous heart. Well, if you look there, it's sort of middle of 13. So 7.13, the beginning of that little paragraph there. For those last few verses, Paul is really kind of doing some brilliant strategic ground-laying work here.

40:13 He's setting the stage for what's about to come next. because he spins those verses at the very end of 7 telling the Corinthians not just about his own love for them but about Titus' love for them. So he says in about five different ways, Titus really loves you, Titus really loves you. Now why does he do that? Why does he take time to do that right before chapter 8? Well, there's your answer. It's because it's right before chapter 8 and Titus is going to be the one who's charged with carrying 2 Corinthians back to the Corinthians and making the big ask. So they need to like him and they need to know that he likes them.

40:46 Because he's going to have to do the work of collecting the money. Now, speaking of the money, before we dive into chapter 8 and look at some lessons we can learn from it, we need to get our heads around this collection thing. Got to understand kind of what's going on with the collection. Why was Paul collecting a fund for the Jerusalem church? Why does he care so much about that? You see several flashes of this at various times throughout the New Testament. You see it at the end of 1 Corinthians. You see it at the end of Romans. So it's there over and over again.

41:17 And it seems to have been a thing that Paul was pretty consumed by for several years. He was working on this collection for several years. So what was it? And why was he doing it? Well, essentially, here it is. Paul wanted, over a period of time and throughout the sort of known geographical world where the church existed, he wanted to collect the sum of money from Gentile churches that he had planted and give that money as a gift to the primarily Jewish church in Jerusalem.

41:49 Okay, that's what he wanted to do. Collect money from the Gentiles and give it to the Jewish Christians. That was his plan. Why? Well, at one level there was just a flatly practical reason. And that was that the Jerusalem church was just dirt poor. They were financially poor. They were poor to start with because they were ground under the heel of the Roman Empire for so long. But to make things worse, there had been a several years long famine and the church had been racked. The whole region had been racked and the church especially had been racked by several years of famine. So when Paul decides to take up this collection and send the money, the situation is pretty dire and those Christians just needed help.

42:26 But there was another reason that he wanted to take this collection too. he believed that an open-handed gift from Gentile believers to Jewish believers would cement the one great fault line in the life of the church. All you got to do is read Paul's letters and you'll know that the one thing he was most worried about above all was a rupture in the church between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. And it was a great danger. It was a huge danger in Rome. That's one of the main reasons he writes that letter. Huge danger in lots of different places. And Paul did not want there to be a rupture between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.

43:00 And he thought that an open-handed gift from the Gentile Christians, received open-handedly from the Jewish Christians, would bridge that gap and hold the whole fault line together. So it was important to him. And part of what he wanted to do with this letter was to say, okay, listen, Corinthians, now that we're reconciled, now that you've repented of your sin against me, now that we're good together, let's talk again about that money that you said you were going to give. So right there, even in that, you can see the logic that's driving this thing.

43:31 It's just the main idea that we talked about at the very beginning. When your heart is gripped by genuine repentance, that will make you a generous and open person. It will make you want to give your money for the good of other believers. And Paul is pushing on that with the Corinthians. Now you've repented, now we're reconciled, that ought to make you generous. That's the logic that he's putting on. So let's look at these 15 verses of chapter 8 and see how Paul makes his case to the Corinthians that they ought to give.

44:05 In terms of structure, some of you will care about that. I'll just give it to you really quick. The structure of the argument is this. In 1 through 5, he holds up for them the example of the Macedonians. That's where he is right now. He's up in Macedonia. They're the people that he's among while he's writing this letter. And he essentially says to the Corinthians, look at these people. These people are poor as dirt, and everybody knows it. But they gave above and beyond their means, and they did it with a very happy heart, completely out of their own desire. You should be like them. That's 1 through 5.

44:35 In 6 to 11, then, he calls on the Corinthians to have the same spirit, to do that very same thing as the Macedonians. And ultimately, in verse 9, he grounds it in the grace of Jesus to the Corinthians themselves. But that's the call. 6 through 11 is him calling them to do the same thing. Then in 12 through 15, he just lays out a couple of general principles that ought to guide Christian giving. So that's the structure of it. We're not going to work our way through that structure of that paragraph exactly. But I do want to look at this paragraph and look at a few things that we can learn about Christian giving from them.

45:09 And I'll kind of direct your attention to them as we go. So first thing we can learn about Christian giving from 2 Corinthians chapter 8, Paul's argument here. first thing we learn is that, it's the thing we've been talking about over and over again, genuine repentance will lead to a generous and giving heart. Genuine repentance will lead to a generous and giving heart. It's been driving this whole passage. The Corinthians have repented of their hard-heartedness against Paul, and Paul says that because of that, in turn, that ought to make them generous givers for the good of others. So, most of you in here are Christians. Most of you have said that you've repented. You've professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So if you're a Christian, I wonder if you see that in yourself as a Christian. Because if you do an honest sort of accounting of your heart, if you do an honest kind of audit of your heart and you find that your heart is miserly and stingy, then that points to some malfunction in your repentance.

46:13 It points to some malfunction in your faith. A true faith and a true repentance will lead people to be open-handed, not closed-fisted with the money and resources that God has given you. That's the first thing we see. It's just in the logic of the whole thing. Second, I want you to notice from this passage that Christian giving is never compelled from the outside. Christian giving is always driven from the inside. christian giving is never compelled from the outside it's driven from the inside you can see that in fact in the example of the macedonians in verses one to five so i mean look for example at verse two paul says there that these macedonians were under severe affliction and they were sunk he says in extreme poverty so that word extreme is a colorful word because it's mostly used of the ocean in greek literature it's the depth of of the ocean so to be sunk in ocean-like poverty is like scraping the very bottom of the barrel and yet he says they gave in a wealth of

47:20 generosity of their own accord he says even begging to be able to give to help relieve the poverty of this church in Jerusalem. That's how Christian giving works. Christian giving is not compelled from the outside. There's no law that says you have to give. That's not how it works. It's driven from the inside. It wasn't like that in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, it was commanded externally, you will give a tithe. And Paul is very clear, even in verse 8, that that's not how it is with Christians. I don't say this as a command. This is not a command. It's driven from the inside. A Christian gives because a Christian wants to give. Because his heart has been so inclined toward others that his desire now is to give his money for their good. So if that's true, I wonder how you think about your own giving. Do you give grudgingly? I mean, when you write that check, right, in the month, or when you see the deposit online thing happen and show up in your

48:24 bank account, do you do that begrudgingly? Do you do that with some hate in your heart to to see that on your bank statement? Well, listen, brother or sister, if you do, it shouldn't be that way. Your giving to Christian causes, whether that's this church or something else, should not be a grudging thing. It actually ought to be something that gives you deep joy that comes from right down inside you where your faith in Jesus lives. Pray that God would make you like the Macedonians who were so devoted to Christ that they wanted to give even out of their poverty here's the third thing I want you to see here I want you to notice here that Christian giving is not finally about the amount Christian giving is not finally about the amount it's about the heart and both poor Christians and rich ones can and should be faithful givers I mean it's funny when you think about it Paul is using the example of the macedonians who are dirt poor to get the corinthians who are fabulously wealthy to give

49:30 that's that's not usually how it works in evangelical circles today you usually use fabulously wealthy people to get middle class people to give that's what you try to do and paul does it kind of the opposite here he uses the dirt poor macedonians to try to get the fabulously wealthy corinthians to give so so the comparison between them couldn't be the amount of money. He couldn't be saying to the Corinthians, listen, the Macedonians gave this amount of money. You should give that same amount of money. It can't be about the amount because the Macedonians wouldn't have been able to give much of anything. Like the amount of money that they gave probably wouldn't have bought a good meal in Corinth. So it's not about the money, the amount of it. It's about the heart. The Macedonians gave eagerly out of their hearts, and that's what Paul wants the Corinthians to do. Look, there are people in this congregation I know who are not rich. There are members of this congregation who you might even describe yourself as poor, as scraping month to

50:35 month just to get by. And what Paul wants you, if that's the category you put yourself into, Paul wants you to see that even if that's your circumstance, your Christian heart, even in your poverty, still ought to desire to be generous. It still ought to desire to give something. So you see the point? Poverty is not an excuse to be miserly. Poverty is not an excuse to be miserly. And the reason it's not an excuse is because a Christian heart should never even be looking for an excuse to be miserly.

51:11 A Christian heart ought to be looking for a way, any way, to be generous. And what if you're rich? What if God has given you a whole bunch of resources? Well, for the same principle is at work. A genuinely repentant heart ought to be driving you to give. Not just to hit some number like 10% or whatever, but like he says there in verse 2, in an overflowing wealth of generosity. I mean, I don't know what that means to each and every one of you, whether you're rich or poor.

51:43 I don't know what that would mean, that your life would look like an overflowing wealth of generosity. And I can't tell you what that would mean. I couldn't even look at your finances and tell you what that would mean. But it might be worth, friends, looking at the whole of your life and seeing if the whole of your life can honestly be described as, quote, an overflowing wealth of generosity. That's what ought to mark Christians because, number four, there are five of these in total. Number four, it ought to mark Christians because Christian giving is in part motivated by the golden rule.

52:21 That's part of what Paul teaches here. Christian giving is motivated by the golden rule. So that's basically what he says in verses 12 to 15. Look at those with me. He says, if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have. And in other words, if your heart is ready to give, then whatever gift you give is going to be acceptable based on what you have. And there's no requirement for you to give what you don't have, right? That's what he's saying. If the readiness is there, what you can give is good. Keep going. For I don't mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should supply their need so that their abundance may supply your need.

53:01 That there may be fairness, as it is written, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Now, those verses have caused headaches among some Christians because some people misread it and think that Paul is basically just calling for a total redistribution of wealth so that there's fairness, right? So that everybody has the same amount of everything. But if you look at it carefully, that's not what he says. So look closely at 13 and 14. First thing you need to know is that fairness is probably not the best translation of that word.

53:37 In fact, it's really hard to come up with a translation of the underlying Greek word under fairness that really gets at it. The Greek word, I'm sorry to do this to you at the end, but here we are. Paul wrote it at the end. I'm talking to you about it at the end. The word in the Greek is isotes. Isotes. That's going to mean nothing to you. It means nothing to me either. But to the Greeks, it meant a lot because it had a particular meaning in Greek because it particularly described the relationship between friends.

54:08 So friends were commonly said to be isoi together. They had isotes. They were isoi. And so it meant something like that friends are eye to eye. Friends are in it together. They're equals in that sense. So Paul is saying here that that's how the Corinthians ought to see their relationship with the other believers in Jerusalem. You ought to see them as isoi with you, in it together, eye to eye, bound together in friendship.

54:40 That's what he says. So you see how he puts it? So that it's a matter of isotase. It's a matter of this eye to eye friendship, right? And you're going to give so that there will be that isotase. There will be this eye to eye friendship. Second, you look at 13, and, you know, I kind of just said this. He says that their giving should come out of the spirit of isotase, right? He says that ought to be what drives you to give your money to the Jerusalem Christians. And then he describes what he means in 14 there.

55:12 As a matter of isotase, you know, eye-to-eye friendship, your abundance at the present time should supply their need so that their abundance may supply your need when the time comes so that there will be this isotase, right? So that, you know, your abundance supplies their needs so that in time their abundance will supply your need. That's just the golden rule, right? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So that's complicated, but you see the point. What Paul is talking about here is not some call for absolute wealth redistribution.

55:42 He's not calling for socialism. He's not calling for communism or anything like that. What he's doing is calling Christians to recognize that we are all in this together. And when we see need in another believer, we ought to be compelled by Jesus' teaching in the golden rule, among others, to meet that need. That's what he's saying there. But it's not just his teaching. And here's the last thing. The ultimate reason, this is number five, the ultimate reason that Christians should be overflowingly generous is because Jesus Christ has been overflowingly generous to us.

56:16 Far more than we can ever begin to ask or imagine. Look at verse 9. All the way up at 9. For you know, he says, I want you to do this. I want you to give this money because you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you, by his poverty, might become rich. It's an absolutely stunning verse. Just a stunning explanation of what Jesus did for us. He had all the riches of heaven.

56:48 He had all the crowns being thrown at his feet, all the angels of heaven rejoicing over him and crying out, Holy, holy, holy is the Son of God Almighty. It was all his and he left it all to be born in a stable and die on a cross so that we could be raised to the riches of heaven. And what an incredible thing that Jesus has done for us. And if that's true, friends, if Jesus really did that, if you really believe that Jesus did that, then how on earth can you have a heart, a demeanor, an attitude, a spirit that's closed up and cold and scowling and ungenerous?

57:31 Christian, you have been given everything in Jesus. You've been given eternal life. You've been given the blessings of eternity. You've been given the new heavens and the new earth. You've been given the golden streets and the pearly gates. You've been given the presence of God himself. You've been given forgiveness and justification and sanctification and glorification. And friends, there is an inheritance waiting for you in just a few short days. And I don't even care how young or old you are. In the grand scheme of things, there's an inheritance waiting for you in just a few short days.

58:05 That's going to blow your mind. How on earth, how on earth would you spend these short years of your life before you come into that inheritance scraping and clawing for every penny you can get? That makes sense for a worldling. It doesn't make sense for a hot moment for someone who's been saved and delivered by Jesus. Friends, we're a people who claim to have been changed.

58:36 We're people who say, as we talked about even in this book, who claim that a miracle has taken place in our hearts to bring us from spiritual death to spiritual life. That change must affect everything, including our money. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you for the great promises of the gospel. We thank you for the great inheritance that you've promised to us when we finally come into your presence.

59:07 Lord, we look forward. Of all the people on the face of the planet, we look forward to the greatest inheritance that anyone has ever gotten. Ultimately, that inheritance is you yourself, our great King and Redeemer. So Father, as we look forward to that day, as we look forward to that inheritance, let us not have hearts that are closed up and scowling and ungenerous, but let us have hearts that are open and generous and giving and overflowing. because of the overflowing grace that Jesus gave to us.

59:38 We pray all of this in his name and always to his honor and glory. Amen.